Bolt Action! Trenchworx Tank review Pt. 3: T-28
This beast of a tank is the T-28, a great looking Russian tank that perfectly fits the look of a in-between-worldwars-tank, lots of guns, very large, but also slow. Read this review, if you play Bolt Action – it works great in our beloved game!
The Soviet T-28 medium tank was used from 1933-41 in the invasion of Poland, the Winter War vs the Finns and during the German invasion of Russia with 411 seeing action vs the Germans in June and July 1941 and a few even as late as the Winter 1941 defense of Leningrad and Moscow.
Designed as an infantry support tank it had a small main gun and 4 machine guns.
The review today is of the T28 from the small, independent company Trenchworx, who specializes in hard-to-get, interesting 28mm tanks for Bolt Action. Inside the box I found a simple, well detailed kit with only a few parts, instructions and even some magnets.
When I heard the masters were 3d printed I have to say I was a little worried to find plotting lines on the parts, while there were some, they were not as bad as I had expected and I imagine I could have sanded the parts a bit to remove some of it but I decided to just build the model as is and see how noticeable it was after paint.
The castings were very nice and crisp with very little flash and only minimal air bubbles or casting imperfections. I did find a small air bubble on the front idler wheel,this is very common on high detail resin molds and an easy fix but I decided to build the kit out of the box with no additional filling.
This is the only flash I found on the kit and it was so thin it came off with my thumbnail.
The turret bottoms have some extra flow or vent material on the bottoms which was easy to remove.
Assembly was very straight forward with only one little issue, as you can see the locating tabs for the tracks did not quite match to the hull.
I was able to remove a little from the tab sides with my dremmel tool and it went right together
After mentioning it to Trenchworx, they have identified the problem and fixed it, their response was really positive and forthcoming and they immediately shipped out new castings, after the problem was fixed, and they fit perfectly.
The model goes together in a few minutes, mine came with some magnets for the turrets, 2 gun options and some extra machine gun bits in case of breakage. I thought it was weird that the two little turrets are the same offset to the side but that is how they were.
I didn’t wash my model with soap and water, I just went right into primer and paint with no problems.
Here is the model with a 28mm figure for scale and with some paint washes and rust pigment on it.
Drybrushing may have picked up some of the plotting lines, but overall it was not much of an issue and I was happy with the model with no serious prepwork and just some simple paint.
Overall I was very happy with the model. This would be a great model to add to your early war Soviet force. With 4 Machine guns this tank has lots of pinning possibilities for Bolt Action.
By using newer technology, Trenchworxs is able to supply the gamer with some of the more obscure models by using 3D printing to keep the overhead costs down on production and then resin to ramp up production.
Right now Trenchworx is running a kickstarter, that has already been funded, but is still running for a while – check it out here.
John
